Dig up a dino adventure on your family vacation

Chicago's T. Rex named Sue. Credit adactio.

Visiting Chicago's T. Rex, Sue is worth the trip alone. Credit: adactio.

By Carmen Madrid

What is it with kids and dinosaurs? The same child who’s terrified of moths and won’t sleep without a monster-repellent stuffed animal will correct your pronunciation of Ankylosaurus before detailing its eating habits. But there’s good news for dino-challenged parents planning family vacations: dinosaurs seem to be everywhere this year! And, much as I love Walt Disney’s rendition of the prehistoric beasts, these newer versionsleave Disneyland’s animatronic giants looking a little, well, ancient.

For families with plans for Chicago vacations, don’t forget it’s the 10th anniversary of Sue’s arrival at The Field Museum! If your favorite little dino-phile isn’t around to inform you, Sue is the best preserved and most complete T. rex ever unearthed. At 67 million years young, her reign at the Field Museum is just beginning. After you’ve given Sue your best wishes, check out “Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age.” Meeting the famous tiny mammoth “Baby Lyuba” is worth a visit to the Windy City before the exhibit closes September 6. If The Field Museum doesn’t whet your junior paleontologist’s appetite, top off your Chicago vacation at Dave’s Down to Earth Rock Shop and Prehistoric Life Museum in nearby Evanston. The Neanderthal hand axes are awesome!

Currently traveling the country is the Walking with Dinosaurs show, immersing kids of all ages in a 90-minute spectacular of jaw-dropping realism. The 27 semis that haul around these ferocious, larger-than-life “actors” roll into sunny Southern California in early September after an icy tour in Anchorage.

In the Northeast, those taking Philadelphia vacations should stop at the Academy of Natural Sciences for what’s being described as “the ultimate paleo road trip.” Opening October 23, the “Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway” exhibit is the eye-popping culmination of a trip around the American West undertaken by an artist-paleontologist team.

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Carmen Madrid is a Southern California native who now writes from the woods of New Hampshire. An avid U.S. road-tripper, she’s also ventured abroad to drive the nail-biting, narrow mountain paths in Tobago and the icy roads leading up to Spain’s walled city of Avila.

Tagged: Family time